My biggest fear, but in a handy book form!

One of the things that scares me the most is losing my memory. Not the old age memory loss, but a sudden, painful memory loss. It’s a plot device for a lot of 90’s era sitcoms. “Oh no, Stephanie fell off of a horse and had no memory! Now she’s seeing double?!” (Sidebar: Was it Stephanie or Michelle in Full House that lost their memory? I can’t remember.) This, like the ever looming threat of quicksand, was greatly exaggerated by the media I consumed as a child.

Via Goodreads

However, Siri, Who Am I by Sam Tschida brings it to life in a hilarious and often heartfelt rom-com. Mia wakes up in a hospital with nothing. Including her memory. After a quick phone charge, she discovers that she doesn’t keep her texts, doesn’t have any relationship with her mother, and exclusively uses Instagram to post about her exciting and heavily filtered life. After being released, Mia uses her Instagram detective skills to find out where she lives.

When she gets home, she meets Max, the house sitter her boyfriend hired for a week. Max is a nerd, sorry, brain scientist (how convenient) who Mia clings onto for dear life. They decide to work together to figure out Mia’s life: who is she? Who is her boyfriend? Where does she work? What the heck is GoldRush?

As for the book itself, it’s hilarious and heavily geared towards a Millennial audience. Mia’s misadventures through LA are extremely relatable. She goes through such a huge, transformative journey throughout the book, it’s almost a coming-of-age story, honestly. I thought Mia was a bit of a vapid person at the start, but, by the end, she becomes a force to be reckoned with. The ending surprised me entirely (not the love story portion, but the rest of it). It’s feminist AF (if a bit unrealistic).

I do have a few issues with the book, but they are incredibly minor. It takes a bit to get into. About a 1/4 of the way in, I almost quit, but I stuck with it and I’m glad I did. The problem is that you want answers to basic questions which are usually answered in the beginning of a story, but since this is about memory loss, you don’t get that. It makes the book go a little slowly at the outset. It picks up about 100 pages in and is totally worth it. Also, the overuse of hashtags annoyed me, but, again, minor. This book uses (unnecessary, IMO) footnotes, so reading the actual book might be the way to go with this.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I’ll give it a 4/5, 8/10. Make sure to pick this up when it comes out… which is today! Hooray!

Thanks NetGalley for the eARC!